Here We Stand
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM, minor HPGW. Draco accidentally walks into the middle of an overheated argument between Potter and his Weasley, and nearly walks out again. But when he doesn't, it brings a spark to flame that would never have started on its own. A tale of five times Draco and Harry stand together. COMPLETE.


**Title:** Here We Stand  
 **Disclaimer:** J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.  
 **Pairing:** Harry/Draco, brief Harry/Ginny  
 **Content Notes:** Angst, present tense, Hogwarts "eighth year"  
 **Rating:** PG-13  
 **Wordcount:** 5000  
 **Summary:** Draco accidentally walks into the middle of an overheated argument between Potter and his Weasley, and nearly walks out again. But when he doesn't, it brings a spark to flame that would never have started on its own. A tale of five times Draco and Harry stand together.  
 **Author's Notes:** This is based on a request for an Advent fic from NovaHearts, who gave me the prompt: _It would be great if Draco would walk into a huge argument between Harry and Ginny where they break up. And Draco having to comfort and console Harry where they become friends and later even lovers._ That is basically the plot.

 **Here We Stand**

"You don't understand, you've _never understood_ —"

Draco, frozen on the threshold of the small classroom where the debate is taking place, nearly turns and walks out again. He shouldn't have to; this has been a special study room in the dungeons for Slytherin students time out of mind. But it's not worth defending against the likes of a shrieking Weasley and a bellowing Potter.

Still, though, he doesn't, and that sets the pattern for what follows after.

Potter is standing with his fists clenched in the middle of the room, his magic blazing in a way his blank eyes don't. Draco often wonders why more people don't sidle away from Potter since the war, if he's really the only one who can feel the way Potter's magic has grown. The rest of them act like his late laughs and the lack of expression on his face are the only important things.

It used to be that Draco would look at Potter's eyes to know his mood. Now he just listens to his magic.

"You've never understood what I want, what I _need_ , what family means to me," Weasley is ranting, and her hair sways around her as she shakes her fists and paces back and forth. "Maybe because you've never had any family—"

The world seems to freeze. Draco doesn't think it's Potter's magic. Even as Weasley swings around, he knows she feels it.

The moment a line has been crossed, when something unforgivable has been said.

"I think you'd better go." Potter's voice is soft, but as raw as a shout.

"Harry, I didn't mean it."

Draco, standing off to the side, wants to roll his eyes. He's not a wonderful Gryffindor, with their supposedly pure emotions of love and undying friendship and all the rest, but he knows Weasley meaning it or not isn't the factor here. She _said_ it.

"Go away, Ginny."

For an instant more, Weasley wavers. Then she turns and bursts through the door, which is broad enough—or maybe closed enough—that she never notices Draco standing off to the side as she tears past him.

Potter brings his hands slowly up to his forehead once she's gone, and rubs his brow. Draco experiences the familiar surge of panic that he used to feel whenever Potter rubbed his scar. Then he sees it's mere skin Potter is touching, probably because he has a headache, and sighs out.

The sigh makes Potter turn to look at him. Oddly, when their eyes meet, Potter only gives him a tired, bitter smile.

"Going to spread it all around the school, Malfoy?"

Draco shakes his head, and steps inside. He kicks the door shut behind him, even though he knows Potter will need to leave first if Draco wants privacy to study. But his eyes are locked on Potter anyway, and Potter only watches him back, as if he doesn't even care about pretending that the little _scene_ didn't happen.

"No," Draco says. "But there's a price for that. I want to know what the argument was about."

Potter blinks, his eyelashes looking long enough to cast shadows across his skin. "I shouldn't tell you. It should be private between Ginny and me."

"That doesn't mean you won't."

Potter looks away and paces to the far side of the room, where past Slytherin students have set up chairs. He flops down in one and looks at the fireplace. It isn't hooked up to the Floo, but it still flickers with fire, and Draco has spent a long time staring into the comforting flames there this year.

"I'll tell you because I have to tell someone. And Ginny is probably telling her parents and her brothers right now, and—I don't want to make them choose. I know a few of them are sympathetic to her and some aren't, but I don't want to make them feel like they have to choose a side."

Draco quells his desire to say Potter already said that with an effort. Potter sighs and turns to look at him.

"She wants to get married the instant we leave Hogwarts."

Draco shakes his head slowly, trying to understand how that would work, the sheer circus of it. Even though Potter and Weasley are sharing their final year together because of how Potter missed the NEWTS during the war, there would be still be hundreds of people clamoring for an invitation, and reporters swarming all over the castle, and months of preparation, and no way for Potter to get the privacy he probably wants.

"You understand."

"I didn't say that," Draco protests, even as the relief in Potter's voice sweeps over him like refreshing water.

"It's written on your face." Potter props his chin in his hand and watches Draco. "I don't want to do that. I want to _think_. Ginny says she needs security and to have a new family right away."

"A new family?"

"Her brother Fred died in the war. She wants—well, the security of a new beginning, I think."

"It's not going to come if she goes looking for it," Draco says, and this time his voice is the bitter one, bitter with experience. He tried, with his father in prison and his mother in shock, to create a new family this summer himself, out of his friends and Astoria Greengrass, whom he's been more than half-promised to marry for most of his life. It didn't work. His friends were in shock or denial, Astoria is too young to really understand, and his mother grieved when she felt replaced.

"Yes, you do know."

Draco starts. He's been deep enough in his thoughts that he didn't notice when Potter got up, and now Potter's standing in front of him with his hand reaching out to clasp Draco's shoulder. In a dream, Draco allows it to happen.

"Thanks."

"For what?"

"For reminding me there are other people in the world. And life goes on, no matter what I'm feeling like right now. And there will be other people who have the same kind of sadness and know it, so I'm not alone."

"I didn't say a thing," Draco protests, and he also wants to know how in the world Potter can be comforted by what he's saying even if Draco had, but Potter is already smiling at him and slipping out of the room, leaving Draco alone with his books.

He stands there, stupidly, holding the heavy tomes for a long time, before he remembers to sit down.

* * *

"It wasn't his fault."

The yelling stops suddenly, and Draco, who has been trying to hunch his shoulders to fend off some of the noise, looks up and blinks. Potter has stepped up beside him. The mixture of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw students who have been taunting him most of the morning have stopped.

They're in the Great Hall, with Draco sitting alone at the end of the Slytherin table and the others gathered around him. There are only a few professors at the high table, but they can see easily, and they could have stopped this, Draco thinks. Yet even Slughorn looks away.

Only Potter has been willing to stand up for him.

"It was sure as hell his fault that Death Eaters invaded the castle!" yells a tall Ravenclaw boy that Draco can never remember speaking to.

"Yes, it was," Potter says, and Draco squirms and bows his face to his book. "But that wasn't what you were saying. You were saying he set the Carrows on other students. I know he didn't."

"How would you know, Potter? You weren't here, either!"

"There's this thing called having to read miles and miles of trial testimony before you can testify with a clear head, Bryant," says Potter, and rolls his eyes. "I had to know what happened during that year so I could understand the context of the trials."

Draco blinks. He only attended the trials of his parents—and his own, of course—and he never heard Potter say anything about that. For some reason, he never thought Potter was called as a witness in other Death Eater trials.

Stupid of him. Of course Potter would have been.

"There were things you never read." Bryant's eyes burn. Try as he might, Draco can't recall him. There were so many people he saw out of the corner of his eye last year, people who hid and got hurt and didn't get hurt and were put in detentions and all the rest. "Things you don't know happened."

"Then why not go to the Ministry when they were issuing open calls for testimony? You could have told them then, and they would be part of the official record, and Malfoy and other Death Eaters would have been punished for them."

"Some of us _didn't want to_ ," says a Hufflepuff girl with a whip scar down her face. "It was too bloody private."

"Too bad," says Potter, and leans a casual hip on the Slytherin table. "You had the chance for justice. You can't come up and claim your own vengeance because you didn't want to testify. Draco was punished for his crimes—"

" _How_?"

"Apparently reading the papers is also beyond you, Elias." Potter's eyes are hard in a way that abruptly reminds Draco he _died and came back_ a few months ago. "Or you would have known. House arrest all summer. House arrest this upcoming summer. Confinement in Azkaban while waiting for his trial. Reports to the Aurors on his movements. A fine of Galleons so great the Malfoy inheritance is gone. A tracking spell that means he can't participate in the Defense NEWTS because it would require him to cast some spells the Aurors won't let him use."

Draco winces. All of this information was in the papers, true enough, but not reported all at once. Trust Potter to lay it out like that.

Bryant takes a step back, but the girl, Elias, is still glaring at Draco. "It's not enough."

Potter shrugs. "What would be? I already told you how you could have played a part in the justice process."

"For him to suffer like I did."

"If you mean he should be tortured, then you're no better than the Carrows."

" _Look at my face_!" The girl abruptly stabs her finger at her scar and leans so far forwards that Draco has to grab his books lest they get knocked off the table. "Who's going to pay to heal this? Who's going to stop me from having nightmares at night? Who's going to—"

"I've set up a fund for every student who was at Hogwarts last year to go to St. Mungo's for Mind-Healing if they need it," Potter says quietly. "That was announced in the papers, too. And they can try potions for the scar, although some of them might be experimental. There are ways to heal out there, Elias."

"You cursed them, too. I heard that. You used an Unforgivable Curse on Amycus Carrow."

Potter nods. "And I would support your right to curse the Carrows. But not him."

"He's the _cause of it all_!"

"No, Voldemort was, and he's dead. Why are you picking on Draco instead of Goyle, who was also among the Death Eaters? Or Zabini, who I know got _no_ detentions from the Carrows because he flattered them out of it and set them on other students? Oh, I know," Potter says, and this time his smile is ugly. "Because Goyle is big enough to beat you up, and Zabini has no restrictions on his wand and a dangerous temper to boot. Draco is the safe target."

"Since when do you call him by his first name, Harry?"

That's Potter's Weasley, or former Weasley, pausing to listen with her face so intensely skeptical Draco wants to speak up to spite her. The problem is, he has no idea what he'd say.

"Since I decided to," says Potter, without glancing at her, and Draco feels a mean little worm of satisfaction start to life in his stomach. "And since I started thinking that people who didn't _bother_ to find out when the trials were going to be have started gallivanting around with no bloody right—"

"Mr. Potter! Language!"

"With all due respect, Headmistress," Potter says, and turns to stare up at the table, "you should only scold me or take points from me if you're going to scold and take points from Elias for saying it, too."

McGonagall hesitates, her face pinched. Draco can read her like she's the plainer kind of hieroglyphs. Part of her thinks Draco deserves what he's getting. Not to the point of torture or pain, no, but, well, he did something, he's fallen from grace, he should be _punished_.

Draco prefers Professor Slughorn's reasoning for ignoring him. At least Draco _knows_ that's because his name is tarnished now and his Head of House knows he can't get any advancement or gifts from playing on the connection.

"She did suffer last year," McGonagall says, attempting to hold back, apparently.

"So did I. And there's _been_ trials, and there's _been_ punishment, and at some point people who've been punished have to be integrated back into society." Potter takes a step forwards, and, incredibly, McGonagall moves back. "Otherwise, you just end up with resentment and unending war. Did you know over half the people who joined Voldemort in the first war had family members who'd fought for Grindelwald, and were tried and held in Azkaban for a while, and then after their release they were tortured or murdered or, in one case, pushed to commit suicide? And the perpetrators were never punished because, well, it's _understandable_ to want revenge after justice. Several people interrogated under Veritaserum cited _that_ as their reason for joining Voldemort and wanting to get some revenge on Dumbledore and the Ministry, who looked away from what was happening to their loved ones even after they paid for their crimes. Start thinking about _that_ before you start another bloody cycle."

McGonagall hesitates. Potter looks her dead in the eye and said, "If we're really better than they are, then we allow people the chance to redeem themselves. Not keep up the cycle because we're angry."

He walks past Elias, who says, "Somebody has to pay for my face."

"I'd be more worried about your soul."

And Potter's gone. Draco doesn't even hesitate before he stands up and follows.

He catches Potter outside the Great Hall and says simply, "My thanks."

"It wasn't only about you."

"But part of it was, and that's enough."

Potter cocks his head at Draco, and for a second they stand there, caught by the sunlight from several enchanted windows. Draco's noticed McGonagall and the other professors adding those enchantments all over, even as they head into winter.

Then Potter says, "You're right," and walks away, and Draco enjoys the sight of his dark hair in the sun for as long as it lasts.

* * *

Draco doesn't witness most of the confrontation, because no one does. Potter and his former Weasley have it in one of the classrooms on the second floor. But he does see Potter come storming out with his face red and his chest heaving like he's been trying to rebuild the ruined parts of Hogwarts on his own, and Weasley running in the opposite direction with her hair streaming behind her.

And he hears the gossip that spreads around the school like a windstorm, of course.

No one else seems interested in comforting Potter. Weasley's family are talking with her, and Granger keeps giving Potter sorry looks but not talking, and of course most of the other people don't know him at all. So Draco is the one who takes a clutch of bananas and apples and biscuits from the table and smuggles them out to where Potter is sitting moodily next to Dumbledore's tomb.

Being here no longer bothers Draco, the way it did when he first came back to school. He knows that Dumbledore, who offered him mercy, would understand the way Draco feels himself compelled to behave. He takes a seat on the bench next to Potter and hands over a banana without glancing at him.

"What's this?"

"Lunch, since you're missing it," Draco says, and waits until Potter has unpeeled the banana and taken several bites before adding, "Do you want to talk about it?"

Potter swings his legs and stares at the food in his hands. Draco nudges him with an elbow until he goes on eating it. Then he says, "I don't know when my priorities changed."

That's so unexpected that Draco turns to look at him. Potter plucks a chunk of banana loose and twists it around in his hand until it's pulp.

"I mean, I wanted someone to love me," Potter says, without looking up. "And I've always wanted a family because I never had one, growing up. And I thought that I loved Ginny. But…she still wants to get married right away, and I don't want to. I don't understand why I don't want to." He eats the smashed banana piece from his hand, and Draco has to look away.

"You explained it pretty coherently last time," Draco says.

Potter looked up. "No, I didn't. I said Ginny wanted a new family, and implied I didn't, but I didn't actually use the words."

Now that Draco pauses to think about it, that's true. What he and Potter had in that moment was more an intuition, and Potter said Draco understood it, and that's true. But they never had a _discussion_.

"Do you think you just want to wait a while, and then marry her?"

"Not now. Not after what she said about my family."

So Weasley hasn't been forgiven for the unforgivable thing she said in her last confrontation with Potter, after all. It gives Draco a strong warm feeling in his stomach, to know that.

"No," Potter says, his hands on his knees as he looks at the tomb. "I don't know what I want now. Or, I mean, I know, but I can't explain it to anyone else. Some privacy, and to finish my NEWTS, and not to become an Auror, and play some Quidditch, and not make any life-altering decisions for a few years. But that sounds like putting it off, doesn't it? Just wanting to lie around and do nothing."

Draco thinks a moment, and decides he might as well say what he's thinking. The words are bubbling against his teeth anyway. "It sounds like you want to live a little."

Potter's head whips around, and for a second, Draco thinks _he's_ said something unforgivable. But instead, Potter is staring at him with such huge eyes that Draco manages to give him a little nervous smile.

"That's it," Potter breathes. "That's it. You really _do_ understand." He reaches out and catches Draco's hand, and pulls him suddenly to his feet. Draco goes along with it, but sways a little. Potter stares at him, then adds, "You missed lunch, too."

"Am missing lunch. And I brought more than enough for both of us."

Potter goes still, another strange reaction. Then he reaches out and traces his fingers along Draco's eyelashes for some reason. Draco finds his eyes fluttering shut, an uncontrollable reaction, but one he wishes he could fight, because he wants to keep looking at Potter's face right now.

"You've brought more than enough in several ways. Thank you."

And Potter keeps standing beside him, tracing the outline of his eyes, and Draco keeps them shut. When he opens them because Potter's warm touch has disappeared and brought Draco out of the trance he was in, Potter is walking back to the school.

He took two bananas and an apple. Draco looks down at his empty handkerchief and wonders absently if this is what it feels like to have your heart about to burst with happiness.

* * *

"Malfoy! I want to talk to you."

Draco turns around warily, his hand on his wand. Since that confrontation in the Great Hall, there have been fewer people willing to taunt him, but it still happens sometimes. And this voice isn't one he trusts.

Weasley—the male one—trots up behind Draco and stands staring at him with a complex expression. Draco checks the corroder behind him automatically, but there's no sign of Granger. Or Potter, for that matter. Draco hopes his disappointment doesn't show.

"About what?"

"You did something to Harry. What was it? Did you use the Imperius Curse? He's been acting differently ever since he broke up with Ginny." Weasley abruptly puffs up, the sure sign that his brain is working harder than it should. "Did you use the Imperius Curse to force him to do _that_ , too?"

Draco sighs and holds up his wand. "Do you see this, Weasley? Do you know how heavily monitored I am? The slightest chance that I'd cast an Unforgivable would fill the school with swarming Aurors."

"But you must have used something to make Harry agree with you. Some potion or something."

Draco opens his mouth, but Potter's voice is the one that answers, although admittedly with a hard drawl in it that Draco's never heard before. "It's nice to know that even my best friends have such faith in me."

"Mate, I didn't mean it that way," Weasley objects, turning to face Potter as he descends a set of stairs.

Draco does the same thing, and catches his breath in stunned astonishment. Maybe it's only that he's open to the possibility of seeing Potter differently, now, but he looks _magnificent_. His hair seems to have dusky gleams of red in it, and he pauses and cocks a leg in a way that mimics a dueling posture. Draco can imagine the way his muscles will flex if he moves away or spins to the side.

Through the rest of the conversation, Draco keeps his eyes on Potter, not Weasley. He knows it's a little risky, but he also knows that if Weasley shoots a spell at his back, Potter will probably block it. And Potter will _certainly_ take revenge for it.

"Why are you spending time with him at all, mate?"

"Because I want to."

"But he has something to do with you breaking up with Ginny."

"No, Ginny did that on her own," Potter says, an edge in his voice, and comes down another step. "I didn't want to put you in the middle, so I didn't talk to you about it. But you _know_ she wants to get married in June, the instant we finish our NEWTs, and I don't want to."

"She just wants a family…"

"She _has_ one."

Weasley winces, maybe realizing this isn't the most productive line of argument. Draco catches that movement out of the corner of his eye. But he doesn't really care. He's still looking at Potter. That disdainful gleam in his green eyes really improves his looks.

"Mate…"

"She said some things I really can't forgive, Ron. I know she didn't mean to. But she _said_ it, and I don't want to have children with a woman who can say things like that to me. Hell, I don't want children right now _anyway_. You and Hermione are together, and you're still not planning an immediate wedding or babies next year, are you?"

Weasley winces again. "No, but Hermione isn't Ginny."

"Good thing, too," Draco can't help but mutter. Weasley glares at him; Draco knows that particular feeling of burning on his back without looking. He _looks_ , though, at the gleam of Harry's teeth and the way he moves his hand in a slight gesture like a dueler acknowledging a hit.

"I know," Harry says, more gently. "And I'm not Ginny's. I haven't decided everything about what I am, yet, but I'm not that." He walks the rest of the way down the stairs, and now he's standing next to Draco, looking at Weasley over his shoulder. "It has nothing to do with Draco."

Draco soaks in the sound of his first name, and only realizes that he's been calling Harry by his own when his thoughts catch up with his feelings. He flushes a little and doesn't move only because that would attract Weasley's attention.

"You've been spending a lot of time with him…"

"That's something friends do, Ron."

Weasley looks one more time at Harry's unyielding face, sighs, and turns away. He doesn't try to say anything. He just walks off, and Draco watches him go this time, before turning back to Harry.

"Come on," Harry says, and turns around. "Study session in the library."

Draco blinks. "You want me to come?"

"I won't have one if you're not there."

And Merlin, the sweet warmth that fills Draco's chest when he hears that. He follows Harry, and this time, he allows his eyes to dip and admires the sway of his arse along with the glints in his hair.

From the dark grin Harry gives him, Draco thinks he knows about it…and doesn't mind it.

* * *

It was probably inevitable, Draco thinks, as he sits on top of the Astronomy Tower in the rain and watches it fall straight down past him. He doesn't have to cast an Impervious Charm. He cast one on himself before coming up here.

Weasley—the female one—was wearing garnets in her hair and around her throat at breakfast this morning. Draco has no idea where she got them. It's not like her family could afford them.

He feels a faint flutter of guilt at the thought, but swats it away. It isn't like Harry is here to be annoyed by it.

Harry will never be here again.

Draco rests his chin on his knees and watches the rain. It isn't the kind of thunderstorm he used to prefer, when lightning stabs the clouds and thunder roars as if it was the wounded one. The Dark Lord liked to use those nights of storm for his killings, so Draco hasn't preferred them in quite a while now.

Weasley stood up and fluttered her hair at Granger and announced, "I'm going to explain to Harry that it doesn't have to be like this. That we can wait to get married, if he wants. I was—rushing into it. I just need to tell him."

And then she walked out of the Great Hall, and Draco hasn't seen her or Harry since.

Draco closes his eyes. He was supposed to meet up with Harry at what's become _their_ table in the library for a study session. But Harry never showed, and a few Gryffindor witches started to giggle and shoot Draco glances so hostile that he finally got up and left.

Draco sighs. He'll get over this, he knows. He got over so much else, like the trial and the loss of his family's money and the way that his efforts to build his friendships back up failed. But it will take him a while.

"Draco?"

It's only his firm grip on the parapet that keeps Draco from falling over the edge. He turns and gapes at Harry, and he's not ashamed to admit that his heart's jumping. At least his body isn't.

"I thought I would see you in the library," he says stupidly. As if that matters when Harry is here and _now_.

"I had an argument with Ginny. I wasn't good company." Harry shakes his head, and then suddenly reaches down and pulls Draco to his feet. Draco goes with him, staring breathlessly at him.

"You've been such good company for me," Harry whispers to him, and reaches behind Draco's head to cradle it. "I know you might not know it, but you're almost the only person who hasn't wanted to talk to me about Ginny."

"Really?" Draco asks dazedly. He's thought so much about it that he was sure… "But I did say something to you. That day we were by Dumbledore's tomb."

"Only one conversation. Not endless questioning. Everyone else is so sure that they know what I want, what I should want to do." Harry smiles a little, and Draco can only see it because there's a _Lumos_ Charm glowing at the end of Harry's wand, stuck in his front robe pocket. "And you gave me permission to be uncertain and keep my future open. No one else has done that."

His hands tighten, and he shifts them around so that they're away from the edge of the Tower and the falling rain. Then he leans nearer and whispers, "And there's something else you've done, that no one else would have done, because they're so used to thinking of me as Ginny's property."

"What?"

"Thought about me like _this_."

Draco has kissed people before, but never as hard and hot as Harry kisses him then. Draco promptly grabs Harry's robes and neck and hair, thinking all the while of how stupid he's been not to do this before. It's _wonderful._ Even when the wind shifts and lashes some of the rain past the new Impervious Charm Harry's lifted above them, Draco doesn't care. Kissing Harry with water falling down his face is just as wonderful as all the rest of it.

Harry finally pulls away and says awkwardly, "I suppose I should have asked you before I did that. If you wanted it—"

Draco reaches out and pinches his lips shut. It seems the most sensible thing to do right now, when Harry's on the verge of being so very _not_ sensible. He tips his head, kisses the side of Harry's neck, and says, "I do. Very much."

And Harry smiles, and they stand there, holding each other, on top of the Astronomy Tower, rain pouring past them, while warmth that has nothing to do with charms beams through Draco's chest, and Harry's smile grows bright enough to light the darkness by itself.

 **The End.**


End file.
